


Hardly Ever

by greenpen



Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 04:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3714433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenpen/pseuds/greenpen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She goes over it in her head. Things she said but shouldn’t have, things she did but wished she hadn’t. Pushing him away, and leaning on him, and holding her tongue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hardly Ever

It’s a conscious decision. 

To one day leave, and to forget him, and to leave him behind, where he used to belong, where he _did_ belong.   

To convince herself that he’s not coming back. Not for her anyway. 

She goes over it in her head. Things she said but shouldn’t have, things she did but wished she hadn’t. Pushing him away, and leaning on him, and holding her tongue. 

She leaves. She moves. 

She moves on.  

One day she gets a call from German intelligence asking, can you come work with us in Berlin? She’s only been to Germany once or twice, Ramstein, many years ago. 

She remembers Astrid and wonders if she arranged it. If she knew before she did that this would happen and she’d need an escape, some way out. 

She says, I can come work with you in Berlin. 

She leaves home and her life and takes her kid and moves to Berlin and it’s like something from a 90’s sitcom, working mother starting new life in big, strange city. 

She’s there for Franny’s first steps and her first words and begins to forgive herself for missing so much else. She imagines years from now Franny asking about this time in their lives, in their young and magnetic lives, living in the foreign city, the blizzard that first winter there. 

She doesn’t think about home or him if she can help it. She comes up with tactics. She runs a marathon and everything’s that happened before feels somehow endured.

And she thinks about the lives she's lost, and the people she misses, the people she’s missed. She looks at Franny, her icy blue eyes, sees him in them, thinks about how she’ll tell her kid about her father, how she’ll phrase it. She writes it down. She writes things down now, so she won’t forget. It seems like a risk she can’t afford to take anymore. 

She meets someone, a journalist, soft eyes and a tender smile, and she feels for the first time in what seems like a long time like this might be _it_. She feels fear but she does not feel paralyzed or ashamed or protective of herself and this nice life she’s fostered. 

And she allows herself to settle into the idea of him, of having him around, and he reciprocates. 

She doesn’t feel like the crazed woman, the character in someone else’s version of events, she doesn’t even think about that. 

He is soft-spoken but has many friends and all of a sudden so does she, people whose company she enjoys, people who can keep her secrets, and he cooks for them at dinner parties. 

It’s a nice life, she feels ensconced, like staying under the covers on a cold morning, to keep your feet warm. 

The truth is she doesn’t miss him. She doesn’t think about him. Hardly ever. She hears radio chatter here and there but it exits as soon as it enters, which is what surprises her. How easily he seems to slip from her brain, like water sloshing out of a pitcher. 

It feels not like a loss but like a memory, something unavoidable. Something she’s put in a far-off box, over there, if she bothered to search for it. Attainable, if she ever wanted to open it. 

This brings her peace and comfort. She hopes he feels it, too. She’s at that point, wishing for his happiness instead of wondering why. It’s a conscious decision, to wish him these things. Not effortful, but conscious. A mantra she tells herself so many times that she believes it. Maybe it is effortful. 

But she doesn’t think about him. Not really. Hardly ever. 

They move into a bigger apartment, a place near Mauerpark, where he has an office to work in and the light is good, which is all of a sudden something she cares about. 

They teach Franny to read. She’s a natural of course.

She earns a promotion. 

He teaches her German and she makes him watch old Hollywood movies. She says it’s another kind of education. He’s never seen _Casablanca_ before and she does her very best look of fake-but-actually-real horror. 

He earns a prize and they go to London for the weekend together and she thinks, no one knows me here. No one knows who I am. No one knows what I did, what I’ve done, who I’ve slept with, who I’ve loved. 

These are not her secrets. If he asked her, she’d tell him. She’d tell him and she knows that he wouldn’t judge her or probe. But he doesn’t ask. 

He’s not disinterested and it’s not unimportant. He is patient. 

She waits for him to ask and he waits for her to tell.

One day she does. She tells him almost everything. Pakistan (he already knew). Him (no idea). Franny’s father (he is only referred to this way) (minor details). The director (of course). 

It brings every piece of her together, for him at least, the missing part of the puzzle, and she makes sense, she’s not so mysterious. She realizes she’s not. 

He doesn’t leave. She knew he wouldn’t. 

She thinks about having another kid. It’s a conversation they have, together, and she thinks about the last time she had this conversation and how it felt, and where she was, the yellowed light hitting his face like he was jaundiced. She says maybe, one day, but I’m not getting any younger. And he says, you look younger than the day I met you, and she wonders if that’s true, if that’s how this was supposed to be, and maybe I don’t mind getting older, if this is what happens. 

And she thinks of where she was ten years ago, in Baghdad or maybe Beirut and going without a pill every other day to see what would happen because it wouldn’t matter if something did. 

It’s so easy. She marvels at how easy it is, when she finally just relinquishes and gives in to what almost killed her and lets it envelop her.

And that was a year ago. 

And today is a normal day. 

She wakes up, and he’s there, and she can’t wait to see Franny, her blue eyes that look like his. He has a big story going to print today and she says we’ll celebrate when I get home and she thinks about the notes he asked her for on it and the red pen he gave her for emphasis. 

She sits in her office, drinking tea, thinking about how warm it is today for March. 

A blur of black passes by. 

She looks up, sees the familiar old image of his slacks, that dark grey jacket he’d wear, his stance awkwardly askew. 

She feels a pang of terror in her gut, the threat of it all crumbling, the fear that the life she’s built is only a facade. And the fear of this fear, too. 

She wishes badly for a cigarette. She hasn’t had one in ages, she strains to think of the last time. What she’d give for that tension to ease on her lungs, to feel the smoke inside her body and then exhale. 

She rises, picks a piece of paper up as if to deliver it somewhere. Really it’s a shopping list, she still can’t stop writing things down. 

She speeds up, walking behind him now. He’s let his hair grow, longer than she’s ever seen it. She wonders why. 

Ahead he pauses, turns. She halts to a stop, her pulse quickening. 

He turns and it’s not him, of course. Just some man, some other person with dark hair, grown too long, grey pants and jacket, white shirt tucked in. 

For a moment she wonders if she’s configured him in her imagination, if he ever really existed. She wonders that sometimes, if her entire life hasn’t just always been _this,_ what it is now, and everything else a dream.

And she strains to remember what his voice sounded like, the smell of him, how his eyes looked when he smiled, she thinks of the time he brought his hand to her face, the feeling of his skin against hers. 

But she can’t. She can’t even remember. 

He’s gone. 


End file.
